Curious writer is curious

[rolanni]

One of the interesting things about writing in a large-ish universe for, oh, a quarter-century, is that you're pretty often meeting people who have read your work (or, even more interestingly, haven't read your work), and who have formed opinions about the plot-line, the characters, the theme, the authors' childhoods, and adult proclivities. .
.

That being so, and because  people will say things either to me or within my hearing, I find myself with a question, which I will now throw out to you, the readers of the Liaden Universe®:

What is, in your opinion, the Big Story (also known as the Real Story) of the Liaden Universe® novels?

There are no right answers, or wrong answers.  Curious author is, as advertised above, curious.

Comments

[readinggeek451]

I can't begin to answer this, because I don't even understand the question.

(The question the other contributors seem to be answering would not have occurred to me as what you were asking.)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

A fairly frequent complaint of any of the books by random readers who are reading for what they think of as "The Story" is that the book that offended them "does not advance The Story."

The Story is what the particular reader is reading for. One gentleperson commenting here some time back, for instance, appears to be reading the books to find out what happens to the DOI. To that person, The Story is about the DOI's comeuppance, and anything that does not speak to that particular point has not advanced The Story.

I mention this person not because their viewpoint is ridiculous, but because they are one of the rare people who actually articulated what The Story was for them. Most people with this complaint merely say that Book X did not advance The Story, without saying what story that was, exactly.

Thus, the exercise in hand.

[readinggeek451]

Thank you for the explanation.

The Liaden books have multiple Stories in that sense; that's part of their charm for me. And I think I would like them a lot less if they were always and only about "advancing The Story", instead of being about the characters and their relationships and adventures.